Is Linden Lab selling or renting land?

Robin Linden has announced to remove land sales on private islands from the land finder. This comes after Linden Lab collected 13000 US$ for sims from me that I "bought" under the impression I would be able to advertise my land there. Speaking for Linden Lab, Robin insists on calling land sales in "Ansheland" "rental", even though owners have full control of their land and several residents successfully resold land they acquired in "Ansheland". Residents have sold land in "Ansheland" to other residents.

In one e-mail to me Robin Linden told me that land owners in "Ansheland" are only "renting" because I have the power to reclaim land in the sims.

Well, looking at the land Linden Lab "sells" I have to notice that Linden Lab has the same power to reclaim land on the mainland. In the Terms of Service they even reserve the right to remove each of us from Second Life at their own discretion. There is no guarantee and nothing legally binding that one so-called "land owner" receives from Linden Lab when "buying" land. There is nothing they hand over to us, all servers remain in their ownership.

Another thing is that residents have to pay so-called "tier fees". If I look at average sales price for one 1024sqm parcel of land on auctions it is about 20 US$. One year of tier fees is 96 US$.

So what is Linden Lab really doing? Are they selling us land or are they in fact renting land? Is there any difference between what Linden Lab is doing and what I am doing?

To me the bottom line is that I paid for my land and I have the right to sell it to someone else. It's more like a condominium than a rental. So shouldn't I have the same tools as anyone else to sell my land?

I wait and hope that Robin Linden put an answer here.

I have an OWN house on MY Island in Victoria.-)

The argument is the splitting of some fine hairs. The problem being: there is no land. It's just access to server resources. Access controlled in part through an artificial means, the L$.

Anshe, you can withdraw the land at any time. Well, so can the Lindens.
Anshe, you can apply restrictions to the use of the land. Well, so can the Lindens.

To try and answer the question directly: The closest analogy is renting, SL is too transient to consider somepthing as being owned outright.

To my understanding Robin Linden wants to make sure there is a clear way of users to know clearly if the land being bought is owned by LL themselves or a private SIM owner. Instead of removing private sales completely from the finder would it not benefit both parties to simply add another color or remark next to the land indicating that the land is not LL land but private sim land?

I can not imagine this being hard to impliment, it would be a compromise beneficial to both sides of the issue and it will give private sim owners (and sub-parcel owners) the ability to still advertise and sell their land in the finder yet give a clear indication of it being privately owned.

There is no reason this has to be a hot or cold issue, we can work towards a warm agreement.

I'm appalled.

The Ansheland is land sold under conditions. The Lindenland is sold under conditions. The chief form of the conditions is the payment of tier after initial purchase. In Ansheland, you pay Anshe. In Lindenland, you pay Philip.

There's no difference of any real significance, even allowing for the idea that on Linden land "I can do what the fuck I want" and sell it whenever I want including for extortionist prices to force others to end my griefing.

And even if there was some kind of little picayune difference, so what? Why can't rentals be put on the land-for-sale list? Why don't they either a) allow land-for-sale listings by permitting an owner to set the land to $0 for sale to himself to make it show up in the list (this seemed to work to me in the past but it doesn't now) or allow land that is sold on the islands to show up in the list?

Robin's intrusion into this sphere of player freedom and land ownership simply startles me. I don't get it. Why? What is her reasoning? What is her motivation?

One can speculate. Ansheland is sold for a lot less than land on the open market? But...so what? Land has more refined tier levels than Linden Labs itself has...but so what?

I can only wonder if Ansheland poses some "competition" to Linden Labs. But since Anshe is ponying up a very healthy sum of front-end investment, paying tier, absorbing the burden of holding paid-up tier on land not returning any money to her if she doesn't have 100 percent rentals/sales, why are they fussing about this? And aren't they supposed to be building the scaffolding but stepping out of the way to allow players to make their world?

If Ansheland proves serious competition to Linden Labs, it will because Ansheland met the players' demand for grief free, lag-free, residential land where they can play house.

Linden Labs, like a lot of the FIC-type players, seemingly have a real aversion and even hatred of those "masses" who want to live grief-free (i.e. not provide 100 percent freedom to the minority of tekkies and artists who want scripting right-of-way and even lunatic and offensive expression right-of-way). They really hate the idea of "playing house" -- decorating avs, meeting, falling in love, marrying, decorating some more. The beneficient effects of "playing house" on the grid -- more stable neighbourhoods, more rational spacing of green dots and rational and dispersed CPU usage, more sales, more business -- are desirable effects that either Linden Labs (and the feted) don't understand, or hate because it runs against the grain of their tekkie wiki concept where everybody just sk8tes to sandboxes in groovay gear and makes kick-ass weapons, vehicles, and shiny geometric towers or sequesters themselves off on collective farm where they may make brilliant gigantic builds but wrangle endlessly about how to share prims.

Anshe, I don't get why Linden Labs, or at least Robin Linden, doesn't like you and your Ansheland project. You are finally addressing the crying need of this game for lag-free, grief-free, and ugly-build-free living. The masses just turned their back on all the FIC-induced endless harangues about how buildings are never really ugly, or lag is really all your own fault on your computer. They never bought it for a second.

I have my own worries about the conservatism and uniformity that Ansheland brings, but those worries are of a different order. Ansheland is the logical, evolved progression of this world. That logical, evolved, normal progression needs facilitation in the form of the simple tools to advertise these very low-cost and beneficial land. A flat, green, mature 4096 waterfront can be impossible to find on the old world, and when it is found, it is often disupted by a 246 square of water in front of it with George Bush. In Ansheland, it won't be.

Like I said, LL needs to have an in-game classified section for rental properties. But it makes sense to me to have land for sale and land for rent on the same list. They are not really so different!!!

Well, unless you rack servers, allocate bandwidth, provision IP space, and then parcel it all up, I'd say you're renting.

But you don't want to hear that, I'm sure.

It is very difficult to justify making commitments when they keep changing the rules all the time.

There is one HUGE difference.

You said it yourself.

With one, I'm dealing with LL.

With the other, I'm not.

To be blunt, none of the above. Linden Labs and Ansheland are both selling rights to rent finite server space in the same facility or facilities. The only difference is the method of distribution and terms.

And, as mentioned, the "middleman" (or woman) involved is a big thing.

The difference for me, and why I would never rent/own land from an individual, is that Anshe Chung can walk out the door and be run over by a large bus. Or a small bus, or a mini bus, or a heart attack, or a nasty case of purple uglies.

*POOF* goes 'my' land and any rights I had to it.

If the same happens to Philip, Linden Labs will in all likely hood continue.

That sums it up pretty well. In the short time I've been here they (LL) have done an about face on too many things Bah.

If I were Anshe I'd be annoyed to say the least.

Seems like that would be the ideal way to handle it

I do consider that I rent land from the actual owners, being LL. I would never consider renting land from another player, its just adding a unneccesary layer. Its just stacking rules upon rules.

Before responding to Anshe in this post I would like ask her the following question:

How many sims did you 'buy' from the Lindens for your $13,000 US? Its got to be more than 10 because the economics don't make sense otherwise. I certainly cannot come close to offering mature land for 5 - 6 L$ per m2 with the current auction frenzy.

Bob

Yes Anshe there is a huge difference between what LL is doing and what you are doing.

LL owns your account and avatar, you own nothing of LL's.

You are renting from them at their sole desecration - you are sub-letting their virtual land to your customers.

Due diligence of the TOS/CS makes ownership clear.

_/_/_/

Linden Lab owns our SL accounts, AVs, virtual possessions, etc.

We own nothing of LL's - it's a huge difference.

LL can decide tomorrow to go into the Web Hosting business, and pull the plug on SL, and we've all agreed to it re: the TOS.

As posted earlier in the hotline:

We are looking at this more closely. There are no changes planned that would affect the way private island land is being rented other than to disallow it from the Land Sales directory. This is simply an effort to make sure that the renter realizes that although they have all the privileges of ownership, they aren't the owner.

As the practice becomes more widespread with multiple island owners parceling their land the potential for abuse grows. In an ideal world we will have agreements and a means for conflict resolution so when a landowner decides they've had enough, or they are unhappy with one of their renters, they can't just reclaim the land with impunity. Until then it's important that the renter know what they are agreeing to.

What I'd like to do is to simply find a way to make it clear that the island land parcels are being acquired under somewhat different circumstances than mainland parcels. That would be the best solution, in my view, and what we'll work toward this week.

And yes, I agree that the way Anshe is building out her islands is both good business and good for SL in the long run.

Robin, I am not renting the land. I paid for the land, just like I would have if I had bought it from anywhere else.

Just please keep in mind this also disallows the ability to resell it on a level fair with other resellers.

Does your name appear as the plot owner? I haven't check out the Ansheland sims, so I'm not sure how the land ownership transfer is done...

The land is deeded to my group in which I am the only Officer.

The problem here is semantics. Is not Anshe leasing the land to individuals? The fact that the individual pays the total amount up front for the lease is different then outright buying a parcel from another individual, or from LL. Also, leases may be resold, just like property can. This might avoid the buy/rent dicotomy.

In summary:

LL sells land

Anshe leases the land she refers to in her original thread

I gather that when Anshe bought here sims, she expected that her land sales will appear in "find land for sale". It looks to me like she feels that if her land is suddenly not listed, she's had the rug pulled out from under her.

Robin, it looks like there is a lot of seat-of-the-pants decision making going on. Controversies like the event calendar, anshi-land in the find land, telehub in the new continent have similar hallmarks: vocal residents on both sides of the issue with valid points of view. What's a soveriegn do?

Try this: Instead of, "Ready, Fire!, Aim.", do it in a little different order. Maybe think things all the way through before pulling the trigger on changes

Buster

It's good to hear this coming from the Lindens. As a resident in Friesland and A'hsha, two of Anshes Sims, and as someone who is very interested in the further development of a healthy and growing economy in SL, I am really somewhat concerned about these changes.

Like you said yourself, Anshe and other land barons who are - or will be - copying her very succesfull model are fulfilling a very important role in the economy of SL. Yes, they are making a profit. Which is not a bad thing per se And at the same time they are doing what the Lindens won't be able to do less and less: developing the land. There is simply now way for LL to do this in the scale which will be neccesary when SL grows further - and I think it is even a good thing, that this is done by many different people and organisations. Variety is good!

But it can't be done effectively without an easy way for Land Barons to "resell" that new land - if you call it "selling" or not.

If you look at what Anshe did with her 'national' Sims or the wonderful new A'ksha sims you'll see that she is meeting an obvious demand. The parcels in some of those Sims sold like sliced bread - and not only because the very competetive price. Residents are building wonderful things there, too. Its not just "cheap land". I aggree with that in full. There definitely is a higher risk involved when buying from her - at least in theory. I would not consider much risk in her doing some arbitrary decisions, throwing out residents for little cause etc. There is too much at stake for her. If she do that, her business - which in this world without a working contract law, is based solely on trust - would suffer gravely. But, yes, she can have an accident, go belly up financially etc.

I just wonder what would happen, if there was a real corporation behind her. How would the 'risk' be seen, then? I think there's got to be a way, where Land Barons can do what Anshe is doing now, where the contractual difference in comparison with buying form the Lindens is made clear to the buyer, but - it should be just as easy to buy parcelled land from her or resell it later, like with land on the mainland.

In addition there should maybe be some rules in the TOS for what happens, when someone who is owning an island which has been resold partly to other residents, wants to quit, dies or leave the game for other reasons without selling it first. Automatic auction of the sim? Right of "last call" for the Lindens? I don't know. But there are other contractual issues IRL, which are rather similar in character, for which solutions have been found

No reason to hamper a well running business which quite clearly fulfills an existing demand of the residents.

What others here have said - I would NEVER rent land from another player, because apart from the fact it's a totally unnecessary extra step, it requires external arrangements with some anonymous 3rd party, and there is zero protection in place if they did get run over by a bus - or just fuck off with yours and everyone elses money. It's far less likely that'll happen to LL.

It's a matter of trust for me, and generally, as a company, I trust LL.

And no, I really don't think land from private individuals should be in the land for sale list. It's misleading and it's wrong. Make your own arrangements. That list is for what it says - land for sale. If it's kept as such, land you can buy from the Lindens, then everyone including the newest of newbies can refer to it, trust it and know what it means. Let's not muddy the waters.

If you REALLY want, add another tab for private sales entirely. After all, there are already useless tabs in that find interface I'd never look at, like sponsored links. I can easily ignore another one. I can't so easily ignore having to sift through entries for land I'm not interested in from players I would never deal with.